Yay, I finally made it to the movies again

[estepheia]

The Da Vinci Code - sucks dead toads. Its only redeeming feature is Ian McKellan. In my atheistic heart, the big whopper of a revelation elicits a shrug, nothing more. (I never read the book, and I don't intend to) Tom Hanks is underchallenged, the script dull, and the constant choir music grating. Good camera work, shame about the direction. Lifeless, dull. Except for the flashbacks, those had a certain splendour. My verdict: 2 Mona Lisas out of 5.

X-Men 3 - one of the best sequels I've ever seen. An effective mix of storylines carried over from the prequels and new characters. Halle Berry is a eye candy, so is Hugh Jackman, but the movie has more to offer than a bunch of pretty faces, awesome stunts, and fabulous special effects. Namely a decent script (and of course Ian McKellan). I don't know the comic books, so I can't tell you if it's an accurate rendition of the characters, but I do know that the characters work well on the big screen. Good conflicts, good storyline, nice metaphor. And the Xavier/Magneto storyline is the icing on the cake. The denouement was a bit brief, and I sense a sequel in the air, but hey, if 4 is as good as 3, bring it on. My verdict: 4 lightning bolts out of 5.

Next on my wanna-watch list:
Dance! with Antonio Banderas (yum)
Ice Age 2 (yes, I know, I really have some catching up to do)
Pirates of the Caribbean (late July, finally!)
The Wild (any good?)

Comments

[(Anonymous)]

In fact the Da Vinci code movie improved on the book a lot, so you can image how awful the book was. Doesn't it pain you that someone can get crap published and make so much money out of it? Me jelous? nah, course not ;)

Some bits the movie didn't include was the woman (can't remember her name, one from Amillee) said of her Smart Car that it did 100 kilometers to the gallon! Interesting variation on metric there ;) The English channel is described as an ocean and the hero uses a telephone box on the platform of the London underground...

Bits left in that shouldn't have been: A GPS dot that tell the French Police where our hero is... Not actually possible in any technical way and if it were, it would be called a tracking device and wouldnt use GPS technology at all!

The window in the toilets of the louvre!!! With all those valuable painting around you think that maybe someone would have put bars on it, or perhaps an alarm or even sealed it up. In fact there are no windows in the toilets, just as there are no bars of soap... Liquid soap is used, as you would expect from any European public toilet.

But, at least the Smart Car getaway chase worked better in the film than the book (there it was a straight car chase) and Silas the mad monk was cooler in the movie too.

Yes, Tom Hanks did seem under-challanged here and McKellan seemed to be the only one having fun, as though he thought that clearly this wasn't going to win him any oscars, so he might as well camp it up...

For me, the best bit about the film were the various special effects used (CSI style) to walk the audiance through various contrived plot elements. Like Star Wars, this clearly shows that Special Effects, used in the correct manner, can lift a dull film out of the crap.


Shatten (forgot my log-in)

[estepheia.livejournal.com]

*nod nod*
I agree that there were plot holes en masse. I liked the CSI effects, the way we saw Langdon decipher the text and the way flashback and real time merged.
And yeah, Ian McKellan camped it up. Heee. He was fun. Paul Bettany was pretty good too, although I don't like him as a villain. I like him better as Chaucer or as the tennis player in "Wimbledon".

I tried to read another Dan Brown novel, but sheesh, it's utter shite. I find it next to impossible to read.